Kuwait Being Freed Again--of Explosives

Twenty minutes is the limit when hunting land mines, according to French army engineer Jacques Daman. After 20 minutes, knees begin to ache, sweat stings the eyes and even the steadiest of hands can begin to shake uncontrollably.

One wrong move and. . . .

Twenty minutes on, 40 minutes off, eight hours a day, probing the sands of liberated Kuwait with little more than a small shovel and one’s own nerves.

“The objective,” said Daman, 32, “is to give the Kuwaiti people their liberty. They are not yet free when they cannot walk on their own beaches.”

That freedom came one step closer here this week when French forces, having carefully swept by hand a stretch of beach the length of a football field, declared it open and ceremoniously marked the occasion with a ribbon-cutting.

The shore just north and south of the cleared section is still mined and deadly--as is mile upon mile of Kuwait’s sandy coastline well beyond the capital.

Indeed, a month after being freed from Iraqi occupation, much of the tiny emirate remains a virtual ammunition locker.

Specially trained soldiers of the allied coalition are digging up thousands of mines while hunting tons of artillery shells, mortar rounds, grenades and bullets left behind last month by retreating Iraqi troops.

The cache of explosives, commanders say, is seemingly endless.

Each day, life in Kuwait city is punctuated by the dull thunder of the captured explosives being purposely detonated on the outskirts of town. The blasts, sometimes accompanied by window-rattling concussions, have become so commonplace that locals barely seem to take note.

“A little more ‘Saddam, goodby,’ ” says a smiling Kuwaiti policeman, the tranquillity of his afternoon prayer time hardly disturbed by one more boom in the distance.

British officers estimate that their troops have so far collected and destroyed more than 600,000 pieces of ordnance, ranging from bombs to bullets.

U.S. Army officers, who measure their accomplishments in different terms, say they have disposed of more than 300,000 pounds of “net” explosives--the gunpowder, TNT and other such materials found inside mines and projectiles.

“Our problem is not any one type of ordnance,” said Lt. Col. Mark Pierson, who heads the Army’s 1st Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group. “Our problem is all of it. There is just so much volume.”

More than half of the U.S.-seized explosives, 180,000 pounds in all, were disposed of two days ago when several dozen Iraqi Silkworm and Exocet missiles were blown up after being discovered by American troops in southern Iraq.

With so many explosive devices lying about, casualties have been inevitable, particularly among the civilian population.

Kuwaiti officials say an undetermined number of children have been killed or maimed, particularly after picking up innocent-looking cluster bombs that failed to detonate when dropped from allied aircraft. Some of the cylindrical bomblets, which are about six inches long, are painted bright yellow and are attached to toy-sized green parachutes.

Seeking to reduce the number of casualties, the Army has begun distributing a poster throughout the country printed in English and Arabic with drawings of about 30 different explosive devices.

“No matter the size, no matter the shape,” the poster says, “your life they will take.”

At least four Saudi soldiers have lost their lives probing for mines in Kuwait, and more than a dozen have been injured, according to Army spokesmen. Two weeks ago, a British soldier lost an eye when the mine he discovered blew up.

For members of the French 17th Airborne Engineer Regiment, who cleared the beach that was declared open Thursday, the hazards of the job are ever-present. The men work slowly, intentionally so, according to Daman, their captain, and have so far been fortunate. There have been no injuries.

“In Chad,” he noted, “we had a platoon leader lose his foot.” Wearing bulletproof vests and Kevlar pants that resemble cowboy chaps, Daman and his men crawl along the beach, using U.S. Army pack shovels to gently carve parallel channels in the sand in front of them, about 32 inches wide and 8 inches deep. Many modern mines are plastic and cannot be detected any other way.

The soldiers make sure to stay at least 25 feet apart “so that if one man goes, he does not take another man with him,” Daman explained.

They can work only 20 minutes at a time and take 40-minute breaks, he said, “because the men get too tense. You lose the concentration and then, well. . . .”

There has been much to focus on. The regiment, he said, has so far cleared more than 6,000 mines.

His soldiers have found mostly VS-50s--sand-colored, Italian devices about the size of doughnuts. Step on one, and it will probably take your foot off.

Large and more ominous Soviet-made PMN mines also have been discovered. Black and shaped like pancakes, they can take your life.

The French mine hunters have found even more dangerous Italian-produced Valmara mines--so-called bounding devices--sprinkled here and there. Valmaras resemble water bottles and pop out of the ground when tripped, spewing metal pellets that can kill anything within about 30 yards.

While soldiers have cleared the beach by hand, divers offshore have checked for mines that have been planted in the surf line or have drifted there.

Finally, special bulldozers have rolled back and forth across the sand to catch and explode any mines that eyes and hands may have missed.

“It’s a difficult job,” Daman said. “The men sleep well at night.”

He estimated that it will take another three to five months before all 12 miles of beaches that his regiment has been assigned will be swept for mines in such comprehensive fashion. But even then, he said, there is no assurance that the remaining beaches--or even the little strip of sand declared open Thursday--are truly safe.

“For the next 10 years, the people of Kuwait have to look at what is there on the beach, because anything is possible,” Daman said. “We are not machines.”

DEALY DUTY

A month after liberation, only a few small areas of Kuwait’s coast and the runways of its international airport have been cleared of Iraqi-planted mines. Cleared of mines Unexplored ordnance Anti-tank and anti-personnel minefields